This disclosure relates generally to presenting content items to users and more specifically to online systems presenting additional content associated with content items for presentation to users of an online system.
Online systems presenting content to users, such as social networking systems, search engines, news aggregators, Internet shopping services, and content delivery services, allow content to be presented to large numbers of users. Hence, many online systems allow users to easily communicate content to other users of the online systems. Accordingly, online systems provide an ideal venue for presenting content identifying products or services provided by a user of an online system to increase awareness of the products or services by other users of the online system.
Various online systems receive content from users or third party systems and provide the received content to online system users. Additionally, many online systems commonly allow users (e.g., businesses) to sponsor presentation of content on an online system to gain public attention for a user's products or services or to persuade other users to take an action regarding the user's products or services. Content for which the online system receives compensation in exchange for presenting to users is referred to as “sponsored content.” Many online systems receive compensation from a user for presenting online system users with certain types of sponsored content provided by the user. Frequently, online systems charge a user for each presentation of sponsored content to an online system user or for each interaction with sponsored content by an online system user (e.g., each “impression” of the sponsored content) or for each interaction with sponsored content by an online system user (e.g., each “conversion”). For example, an online system receives compensation from an entity each time a content item provided by the user is displayed to another user on the online system or each time another user is presented with a content item on the online system and interacts with the content item (e.g., selects a link included in the content item), or each time another user performs another action after being presented with the content item (e.g., visits a physical location associated with the user who provided the content item).
Thus, online systems select content for presentation to each user that the user is more likely to interact with based on past user interactions of the user with different content. Some users, such as the providers of fast-moving consumer products or services, often have difficulty engaging users of their products or services directly. Such users often rely on brick-and-mortar, digital cross-channel, and shopper marketing partnership methods to provide their consumers with relevant information about products and services. Many of these products are purchased at regular intervals (e.g. dog food, diapers, dish soap, etc.), however, conventional methods for reaching or persuading users of online systems to take action regarding the provider's products or services are unable to adequately connect the providers of these products and services directly with the appropriate users (e.g. consumers of the products or services) or remind them at the appropriate time of the products and services. This may reduce revenue obtained by the online system from interactions with content items and decrease future opportunities for the online system to obtain revenue from the providers of these goods and services (e.g., third party systems or other sources subsequently using the online system to select or to present content to users).